After the federal government reopened, House Speaker John Boehner said, “We fought the good fight.”

It was not a good fight. It was a vicious, seditious, needless, purposely divisive, ugly, bombastic cavalcade of arrogance and angst, promulgated by people who have free health insurance, in order to keep other people from getting health insurance for themselves via the ACA (an imperfect law, to be sure). If it fomented impeachment fervor, so much the better.

It cost hundreds of thousands of Americans and American businesses billions of dollars in varied and wondrous ways. See the tally and the breathtaking depth of misery inflicted at shutdowncost.com.

Political observers say that it also cost the Republican Party. If true, then a win’s a win, though it comes at a high price — barren consolation against the day, never far off, when again the extortionists rise, threatening and petulant and shrill, to attack whatever it is this time they cannot abide.

John Dycus, Arlington

Reconsider views, GOP

The primary goals of most Republicans appears to be to reduce the size of government by cutting spending and to get their way by debt-ceiling and fiscal-cliff emergencies. There are several things wrong with this approach to governance.

Macroeconomic Advisers, a nonpartisan consulting firm, has concluded that the emergencies have unsettled markets and employers, kept consumers from spending and paralyzed the economy with uncertainty, and that the sequester spending cuts have slowed growth.

They estimate that without these two events, there would be 2 million more jobs, the unemployment rate would be 6.7 percent, and GDP growth would be 1.5 percent greater.

It is time for the Republicans to abandon an ideology that says government can’t do anything right and to admit that there are some things that only government can do. The best thing that our government can do now is to raise revenue by closing tax loopholes and spend that revenue on infrastructure.

Unless the government updates education, transportation and water facilities in this country, there will be no economic growth.

Bob Michaelsen, Denton

It’s cleaning time

Reid and greed were the victors when the Republicans caved again and passed a “clean” bill for Obama to sign. “Clean” meaning it was a clean sweep for Obama. It was filled with pork clean up to the eyeballs of every American citizen. The Republicans are clean out of leadership and backbone.

It is time to clean out the incumbents who did not stand against Obama, Reid, et al.